


Bittersweet

by orphan_account



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 18:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17647472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	Bittersweet

The day Isumi smoked his first cigarette was the day Waya passed the pro exams--he remembers it with a peculiar clarity. It was lunch break, he would have to come back to a losing game. He needed some kind of retreat, picked the back utility exit because the boys only gathered there after dark. When he saw Waya sitting with his legs folded indian-style and a cigarette dangling from his lips, he was afraid, then annoyed, then afraid again, but with one sneaker planted firmly out the door he couldn’t really hope to turn back. He’s always taken for granted the fact that smoke and drink would be there waiting for him in his twenties--he would drink Sapporo light and smoke Mild Sevens as his particular Tokyo suburb dictated. Seeing Waya, still two years younger than him, puffing casually on an imported cigarette (the pack shoved halfway into his shirt pocket said Lucky Brand) with only the vaguest tinge of shame in his cheeks sent an electric shock through Isumi’s body that registered first as a thrill, then an empathetic guilt. Isumi stood there for a long time, watching Waya watching him, his eyes impassive but his eyebrows raised, until Waya said, “Isumi-san,” and then, “close the door,” which he did.

He sat down next to Waya then, said, “You’ll make it,” though he meant I won’t. Waya said, “I hope so,” turned his head away from Isumi and exhaled thick smoke, the scent of which Isumi remembers still. Waya handed the butt to him, watched him take a drag and said, “Don’t choke,” which Isumi clearly misunderstood. The smoke was like death in his throat and in his nose and his eyes, and he burned but he didn’t choke. He passed the butt back to Waya and vomited off to the side, washed his mouth out with the Dr. Pepper Waya offered him. Neither of them would ever mention it again. It would take a few months for him to realize what Waya meant by Don’t choke, but by then he was in China and thinking more about the subtle brown of Waya’s eyes (so unlike the uncompromising black he saw in Le Ping) than choking on a little bit of fortitude.

He thinks about what courage means and tells himself that it’s a lot like going for the pro exams one last time, or maybe it’s like sitting up in Shindo’s room waiting to beat the Go back into him, but it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with the taste of tobacco. He tastes that now, a familiar pattern that says bitter at the tip of his tongue but sweet in the back of his throat and he ruminates on it, traces it in his mind until the soft pressure of Waya’s opened mouth disappears and his eyes open involuntarily to a sight he would have rather closed his eyes to. He thinks about what courage means, decides that what he is is taboo and courage means turning tail, pulling up before a fatal downward spiral. He turns his shoulders instead, a vague but devastating gesture that sets Waya’s eyelids to fluttering the way they do when he’s blinking back tears, which isn’t often. Isumi thinks he hates the taste of cigarettes or the way Waya’s jaw is always set so strong, but what he really hates is the fact that he can’t help himself anymore.

Waya stares at their sneakers and he thinks about what courage means. Suddenly he feels the way he did in YangHai’s bedroom (he’d gripped himself in shame, let fall from his lips for the first time Waya’s full name) when he realized what it meant not to choke. He sees that brief glimmer that flashes when he sees himself do the right move just so, and puts his hand on Waya’s neck. He has to wonder when Waya got so small, or if his own hands have always been that big, but then Waya’s eyes open wide and he’s robbed of the wonder in his wonderlust and is left with just lust. It’s a feeling he likens to tobacco, bitter on the edges of his mind but sweet in his chest where his heart ought to be, and it’s more destructive than Waya’s unfiltered Lucky cigarettes but he figures it’s a necessary evil.


End file.
